Letter biography | Gisela Steineckert: Hugs in thought

You can see how much it benefited the author to gather friends and companions around her once again, readers who contacted her, performers of her songs—even letters to me are included. But more on that later. Because these are highly personal letters, Gisela Steineckert addresses her recipients only by their first names. No one should feel like they've been made fun of or even complain afterward. In any case, you read this book because you want to learn something about the author.

This week, on May 13th, she turned 94. That means she can no longer travel all over the country from one event to the next, even though she would love to. She sometimes needs help at home too. Working on this book was a collaborative effort. Her granddaughter Laura helped her sort through 25 years of letters and select the most interesting ones. And you can sense it when you read them, that must have been a great joy. Every letter triggered memories. A fight against being alone. Gisela Steineckert lives in her apartment, her familiar surroundings, but she is not alone.

Daughter Kirsten, granddaughter Laura, great-granddaughter Leni Marie, and many friends. Her husband Wilhelm died in 2016. She makes no secret of how difficult the time was when he developed Parkinson's disease, went blind, and experienced a change in his personality. She opens her heart in her letters. When Wilhelm became ill, they even had a church wedding. And then she rented a room with him in a nursing home and accompanied him during all those difficult days, so that he died in her arms.

As we read, we learn how growing older also means being brave. And how this bravery grows when we don't withdraw into ourselves, but instead offer encouragement to others. That is Gisela Steineckert's great gift: letting others get close to us, opening up to them, even looking inside them. This is also the essence of her poems and songs, which she has written specifically for singers. She has written 4,000 song lyrics, over 40 books, and, during the GDR era, ten film scripts and five radio plays. Jürgen Walter, Dirk Michaelis, Veronika Fischer, Frank Schöbel – they are all gathered here once again, along with Egon Krenz, Walter Kaufmann and others.

That is Gisela Steineckert’s great gift: letting others get close to her, opening herself up to them, and even looking inside them.

They had sifted through tons of paper together, Laura said on the phone. Such a wealth of material that would otherwise have lain dormant and that had to be sorted through again and again. Gisela Steineckert wrote thousands of letters. An entire life is in them. Her miserable childhood with a drinking father and an unreliable mother, the strength even of a little girl not to be broken by it, but to learn for herself how to do everything differently. She is one of those who still lived through the war. Who therefore also know what it means and consider "Simple Peace", as a particularly catchy song of hers is called, to be as important as anything. Her time in the GDR with the singing movement , on the Committee for Entertainment Arts - she has repeatedly thought about the political changes since then. Memories constantly flash back, which one also has to sort through when reading. She has always said her opinion: "The fact that I always dared to live fully and to shy away from almost no risk" gives her strength even today. "Without my mistakes, without my experiences, without my lifelong perspective and tireless interest in other people, just from education, that wouldn't have been enough."

There were already volumes of her letters in 1984 and 1998. The years from 1999 to 2023 follow. Laura says that was important because it's a piece of contemporary history, and this project has also done her good. She speaks of the "feeling of happiness in telling stories" and sometimes also of being overwhelmed. Hugs in thought. She is a loving advisor. "If there's anything I can do for you, let me know" – what she writes, I've also heard from her several times.

We did a book of conversations together in 2013: "Life Has Something." It's now sold out even in secondhand bookstores. I keep hearing how many people would love to have it in their hands. And I beg the publisher to reprint it. "I haven't developed a sense of self for doing nothing," I read in her letter to me dated May 16, 2015. "If I'm not active, even if it's just reading during lean times, then I'm nobody; then I lose everything that sustains me, that draws new strength from me, that temporarily relieves pain, and that makes me feel alive." So, after this book, may a new project appear on the horizon.

Gisela Steineckert: Because of then and now. New Life, 303 pp., hardcover, €20.